A computer that doesn’t power on lands in our shop every few hours. Most often, these are laptops (er, notebooks), and a good portion of the time, the no-power symptom is a result of liquid damage. For some reason deserving of sociological study, the majority of customers who bring in liquid damaged computers refuse to admit any knowledge of a liquid spill.
Sometimes, though, a desktop computer comes through the door and will not power on. It’s usually a power supply. This week’s repair is different. It’s a Power Mac G5 that did not power on for the customer, but showed no signs of trouble in our shop. We sent it home as a CND (could not duplicate) repair, and the customer called us shortly after getting home to report that her machine would not power on.
I asked her to bring the power cord, surge protector, and the computer back to us for immediate testing. I plugged the computer into one of our known-good power cords, and it powered on and booted right to the desktop in about 30 seconds, just like it should. When I tried the customer’s power cord, there were no signs of life.
I’ve used the same power cord for my desktop computers for almost twenty years. Sometimes, though, the power cord itself can be the root cause of a no-power symptom. If your computer doesn’t power on, swap out the power cable to potentially save yourself the downtime.